Asia

Digital solutions can improve city government-citizen engagement, promote improved prioritisation of services, support data-driven decision making, enable greater revenue generation, improve viability and delivery of investments, and support asset management.

This paper explores the four key opportunities that developing country governments and donors must consider if they wish to make their urban areas centres of inclusive and sustained economic growth.

This paper sets out the key challenges that digital solutions could address, provides a skeleton theory of change for how digital solutions can address the challenge of poor urban infrastructure, and then explores the four key opportunities that developing country governments and donors must consider if they wish to make their urban areas centres of […]

At a time when the transition commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution is gaining pace, it is important for donors to understand developing economies’ capacities to build and leverage digital. We created this benchmarking tool to support DFID program managers better understand the different topics that are critical towards building a digital economy.

Do ‘smart cities’ bear relevance in the burgeoning cities of the global south? Basic infrastructure and service provision shortfalls faced by many southern cities present a challenging context for ‘smart’ solutions; and certainly contrasting to those of many existing ‘smart cities.’

On 13 July, the ICED team delivered the quarterly lessons learnt workshop exploring how infrastructure programming can promote women’s economic empowerment. The workshop drew on ICED experience from the Pakistan ‘Support to Urban Productivity (SUP)’ business case.

DFID’s Economic Development Strategy (2017) recognises climate change as ‘the biggest global threat to sustained economic development’. Climate resilient infrastructure can accommodate the shocks and stresses posed by extreme weather events and climate change, while supporting economies and communities (particularly the poor and vulnerable) to survive, adapt and thrive in the face of these challenges. […]

This briefing note reviews the evidence relating to the costs and benefits of infrastructure resilience, considers potential financing options and discusses how DFID staff can ensure value for money during investment decision-making. Infrastructure investments typically have longer lifetimes than other forms of development finance. Operating lives of assets relating to the transport, water and power […]

This briefing note provides an overview of UK built environment industry best practice approaches to planning, designing and assessing climate resilient infrastructure.

In December, the ICED facility hosted a number of Quarterly Lessons Learnt (QLL) sessions. Attached are slides from the  session sharing highlights and opportunities from the ESMAP Conference. The session was supplemented with case studies from the ICED facility drawing from our recent work in system planning and NDCs, Sierra Leone, on and off grid, and the […]